Zilker Park
Zilker Metropolitan Park is a recreational area in south Austin, Texas at the juncture of Barton Creek and the Colorado River that comprises over 350 acres of publicly owned land. It is named after its benefactor, Andrew Jackson Zilker, who donated the land to the city in 1917; the land was developed into a park during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Today the park serves as a hub for many recreational activities and the hike and bike trail around Lady Bird Lake, both of which run next to the park; the large size of the park makes it a capable venue for large-scale events such as the Austin City Limits Music Festival and the Zilker Park Kite Festival. The park was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on 1997; the land surrounding Barton Springs was claimed by its namesake, William Barton, in the 1830s for his cattle ranch. In the 1860s it was acquired by the Rabb family. In the early twentieth century Andrew Jackson Zilker bought a 350-acre plot of land between the Colorado River and Barton Creek, including the Springs, used the spring water in his ice-making business.
Zilker sold his land to the City of Austin in a series of sales in 1917, 1923 and 1931. In the 1930s the city transformed the ranch into a space for public recreation, building park amenities and buildings with help from the Civil Works Administration. Barton Springs Pool was given an enlarged swimming area. In 1934 the park was named Zilker Metropolitan Park, after its patron. In addition to general-purpose lawns, sports fields, cross country courses, historical markers, concession stands and picnic areas, the park includes numerous public attractions; the Zilker Botanical Garden features several independently maintained gardens located near the center of the park and hosts the Zilker Gardens Festival every spring. The Austin Nature & Science Center offers ecological exhibits, nature hike trails, children's educational programming; the Umlauf Sculpture Garden adjoins the southeast end of the park, displaying sculptural works by artist Charles Umlauf and others. The Zilker Hillside Theater hosts regular performances by local theatre companies, including free "Shakespeare in the Park" every May and an annual summer musical.
Barton Springs Pool adjoins the park on the east. The Beverly S. Sheffield Education Center by Barton Springs Pool offers exhibits about the natural history of the Edwards Aquifer that feeds Barton Springs; every winter the 155-foot Zilker Holiday Tree is illuminated, along with a Trail of Lights display. The Zilker Zephyr 12 in gauge miniature railway carries passengers on a tour around the park; the park's amenities and wide open spaces allow it to host a variety of large events each year. Most notably, the Austin City Limits Music Festival fills the park for two weekends each fall with numerous live musical performances by prominent artists. Official website
Stephen F. Austin
Stephen Fuller Austin was an American empresario. Known as the "Father of Texas", the founder of Texas, he led the second, the successful colonization of the region by bringing 300 families from the United States to the region in 1825. Born in Virginia and raised in southeastern Missouri, Austin served in the Missouri territorial legislature before moving to Arkansas Territory and Louisiana, his father, Moses Austin, received an empresario grant from Spain to settle Texas. After Moses Austin's death in 1821, Stephen Austin won recognition of the empresario grant from the newly independent state of Mexico. Austin convinced numerous American settlers to move to Texas, by 1825 Austin had brought the first 300 American families into the territory. Throughout the 1820s, Austin sought to maintain good relations with the Mexican government, he helped suppress the Fredonian Rebellion, he helped ensure the introduction of slavery into Texas despite the attempts of the Mexican government to ban the institution.
He led the initial actions against the Karankawa people in this area. As Texas settlers became dissatisfied with the Mexican government, Austin advocated conciliation, but the dissent against Mexico escalated into the Texas Revolution. Austin led Texas forces at the successful Siege of Béxar before serving as a commissioner to the United States. Austin was defeated by Sam Houston. Houston appointed Austin as secretary of state for the new republic, Austin held that position until his death in December 1836. Numerous places and institutions are named in his honor, including the capital of Texas, Austin in Travis County, Austin County, Austin Bayou, Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Austin College in Sherman, a number of K-12 schools. Stephen F. Austin was born in the mining region of southwestern Virginia in what is known as Austinville today, some 256 miles southwest of Richmond, Virginia, he was the second child of Mary Brown Moses Austin. On June 8, 1798, when Stephen was four years old, his family moved west to the lead-mining region of present-day Potosi, Missouri, 40 miles west of the Mississippi River.
His father Moses Austin received a sitio from the Spanish government for the mining site of Mine à Breton, established by French colonists. His great-great-grandfather, Anthony Austin, was the son of Richard Austin, he and his wife Esther were original settlers of Suffield, which became Connecticut in 1749; when Austin was eleven years old, his family sent him back east to be educated, first at the preparatory school of Bacon Academy in Colchester, Connecticut. He studied at Transylvania University in Lexington, from which he graduated in 1810. After graduation, Austin began reading the law with an established firm. At age 21, he was served in the legislature of the Missouri Territory; as a member of the territorial legislature, he was "influential in obtaining a charter for the struggling Bank of St. Louis."Left penniless after the Panic of 1819, Austin decided to move south to the new Arkansas Territory. He acquired property on the south bank of the Arkansas River, in the area that would become Little Rock.
After purchasing the property, he learned the area was being considered as the location for the new territorial capital, which could make his land worth a great deal more. He made his home in Arkansas. Two weeks before the first Arkansas territorial elections in 1820, Austin declared his candidacy for Congress, his late entrance meant his name did not appear on the ballot in two of the five counties, but he still placed second in the field of six candidates. He was appointed as a judge for the First Circuit Court. Over the next few months, Little Rock did become the territorial capital, but Austin's claim to land in the area was contested, the courts ruled against him. The Territorial Assembly abolished Austin's judgeship. Austin left the territory, he reached New Orleans in November 1820, where he met and stayed with Joseph H. Hawkins, a New Orleans lawyer and former Kentucky congressman, he made arrangements to study law with him. During Austin's time in Arkansas, his father traveled to Spanish Texas and received an empresarial grant that would allow him to bring 300 American families to Texas, they would be called "The Old 300."
Moses Austin caught pneumonia soon after returning to Missouri. He directed. Although Austin was reluctant to carry on his father's Texas venture, he was persuaded to pursue the colonization of Texas by a letter from his mother, Mary Brown Austin, written two days before Moses Austin would die. Austin boarded the steamer and departed to New Orleans to meet Spanish officials led by Erasmo Seguín, he was on June 31, 1821, when he learned of his father's death. "This news has effected me much, he was one of the most feeling and affectionate Fathers that lived. His faults I now say, always have, were not of the heart."Austin led his party to travel 300 miles in four weeks to San Antonio with the intent of reauthorizing his father's grant, arriving on August 12. While in transit, they learned Mexico had declared its independence from Spain, Texas had become a Mexican province, rather than a Spanish territory. José Antonio Navarro, a San Antonio native with ambitious visions of the future of Texas, befriended Stephen F. Austin, the two developed a lasting association.
Navarro, proficient in Spanis
Sea level
Mean sea level is an average level of the surface of one or more of Earth's oceans from which heights such as elevation may be measured. MSL is a type of vertical datum – a standardised geodetic datum –, used, for example, as a chart datum in cartography and marine navigation, or, in aviation, as the standard sea level at which atmospheric pressure is measured to calibrate altitude and aircraft flight levels. A common and straightforward mean sea-level standard is the midpoint between a mean low and mean high tide at a particular location. Sea levels can be affected by many factors and are known to have varied over geological time scales; however 20th century and current millennium sea level rise is caused by global warming, careful measurement of variations in MSL can offer insights into ongoing climate change. The term above sea level refers to above mean sea level. Precise determination of a "mean sea level" is difficult to achieve because of the many factors that affect sea level. Instantaneous sea level varies quite a lot on several scales of space.
This is because the sea is in constant motion, affected by the tides, atmospheric pressure, local gravitational differences, salinity and so forth. The easiest way this may be calculated is by selecting a location and calculating the mean sea level at that point and use it as a datum. For example, a period of 19 years of hourly level observations may be averaged and used to determine the mean sea level at some measurement point. Still-water level or still-water sea level is the level of the sea with motions such as wind waves averaged out. MSL implies the SWL further averaged over a period of time such that changes due to, e.g. the tides have zero mean. Global MSL refers to a spatial average over the entire ocean. One measures the values of MSL in respect to the land. In the UK, the Ordnance Datum is the mean sea level measured at Newlyn in Cornwall between 1915 and 1921. Prior to 1921, the vertical datum was MSL at the Victoria Liverpool. Since the times of the Russian Empire, in Russia and other former its parts, now independent states, the sea level is measured from the zero level of Kronstadt Sea-Gauge.
In Hong Kong, "mPD" is a surveying term meaning "metres above Principal Datum" and refers to height of 1.230m below the average sea level. In France, the Marégraphe in Marseilles measures continuously the sea level since 1883 and offers the longest collapsed data about the sea level, it is used for main part of Africa as official sea level. As for Spain, the reference to measure heights below or above sea level is placed in Alicante. Elsewhere in Europe vertical elevation references are made to the Amsterdam Peil elevation, which dates back to the 1690s. Satellite altimeters have been making precise measurements of sea level since the launch of TOPEX/Poseidon in 1992. A joint mission of NASA and CNES, TOPEX/Poseidon was followed by Jason-1 in 2001 and the Ocean Surface Topography Mission on the Jason-2 satellite in 2008. Height above mean sea level is the elevation or altitude of an object, relative to the average sea level datum, it is used in aviation, where some heights are recorded and reported with respect to mean sea level, in the atmospheric sciences, land surveying.
An alternative is to base height measurements on an ellipsoid of the entire Earth, what systems such as GPS do. In aviation, the ellipsoid known as World Geodetic System 84 is used to define heights; the alternative is to use a geoid-based vertical datum such as NAVD88. When referring to geographic features such as mountains on a topographic map, variations in elevation are shown by contour lines; the elevation of a mountain denotes the highest point or summit and is illustrated as a small circle on a topographic map with the AMSL height shown in metres, feet or both. In the rare case that a location is below sea level, the elevation AMSL is negative. For one such case, see Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. To extend this definition far from the sea means comparing the local height of the mean sea surface with a "level" reference surface, or geodetic datum, called the geoid. In a state of rest or absence of external forces, the mean sea level would coincide with this geoid surface, being an equipotential surface of the Earth's gravitational field.
In reality, due to currents, air pressure variations and salinity variations, etc. this does not occur, not as a long-term average. The location-dependent, but persistent in time, separation between mean sea level and the geoid is referred to as ocean surface topography, it varies globally in a range of ± 2 m. Adjustments were made to sea-level measurements to take into account the effects of the 235 lunar month Metonic cycle and the 223-month eclipse cycle on the tides. Several terms are used to describe the changing relationships between sea level and dry land; when the term "relative" is used, it means change relative to a fixed point in the sediment pile. The term "eustatic" refers to global changes in sea level relative to a fixed point, such as the centre of the earth, for example as a result of melting ice-caps; the term "steric" refers to global changes in sea level due to thermal expansion and salinity variations. The term "isostatic" refers to changes in
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous is a geologic period and system that spans 79 million years from the end of the Jurassic Period 145 million years ago to the beginning of the Paleogene Period 66 mya. It is the last period of the Mesozoic Era, the longest period of the Phanerozoic Eon; the Cretaceous Period is abbreviated K, for its German translation Kreide. The Cretaceous was a period with a warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels that created numerous shallow inland seas; these oceans and seas were populated with now-extinct marine reptiles and rudists, while dinosaurs continued to dominate on land. During this time, new groups of mammals and birds, as well as flowering plants, appeared; the Cretaceous ended with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a large mass extinction in which many groups, including non-avian dinosaurs and large marine reptiles died out. The end of the Cretaceous is defined by the abrupt Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, a geologic signature associated with the mass extinction which lies between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.
The Cretaceous as a separate period was first defined by Belgian geologist Jean d'Omalius d'Halloy in 1822, using strata in the Paris Basin and named for the extensive beds of chalk, found in the upper Cretaceous of Western Europe. The name Cretaceous was derived from Latin creta; the Cretaceous is divided into Early and Late Cretaceous epochs, or Lower and Upper Cretaceous series. In older literature the Cretaceous is sometimes divided into three series: Neocomian and Senonian. A subdivision in eleven stages, all originating from European stratigraphy, is now used worldwide. In many parts of the world, alternative local subdivisions are still in use; as with other older geologic periods, the rock beds of the Cretaceous are well identified but the exact age of the system's base is uncertain by a few million years. No great extinction or burst of diversity separates the Cretaceous from the Jurassic. However, the top of the system is defined, being placed at an iridium-rich layer found worldwide, believed to be associated with the Chicxulub impact crater, with its boundaries circumscribing parts of the Yucatán Peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico.
This layer has been dated at 66.043 Ma. A 140 Ma age for the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary instead of the accepted 145 Ma was proposed in 2014 based on a stratigraphic study of Vaca Muerta Formation in Neuquén Basin, Argentina. Víctor Ramos, one of the authors of the study proposing the 140 Ma boundary age sees the study as a "first step" toward formally changing the age in the International Union of Geological Sciences. From youngest to oldest, the subdivisions of the Cretaceous period are: Late Cretaceous Maastrichtian – Campanian – Santonian – Coniacian – Turonian – Cenomanian – Early Cretaceous Albian – Aptian – Barremian – Hauterivian – Valanginian – Berriasian – The high sea level and warm climate of the Cretaceous meant large areas of the continents were covered by warm, shallow seas, providing habitat for many marine organisms; the Cretaceous was named for the extensive chalk deposits of this age in Europe, but in many parts of the world, the deposits from the Cretaceous are of marine limestone, a rock type, formed under warm, shallow marine circumstances.
Due to the high sea level, there was extensive space for such sedimentation. Because of the young age and great thickness of the system, Cretaceous rocks are evident in many areas worldwide. Chalk is a rock type characteristic for the Cretaceous, it consists of coccoliths, microscopically small calcite skeletons of coccolithophores, a type of algae that prospered in the Cretaceous seas. In northwestern Europe, chalk deposits from the Upper Cretaceous are characteristic for the Chalk Group, which forms the white cliffs of Dover on the south coast of England and similar cliffs on the French Normandian coast; the group is found in England, northern France, the low countries, northern Germany, Denmark and in the subsurface of the southern part of the North Sea. Chalk is not consolidated and the Chalk Group still consists of loose sediments in many places; the group has other limestones and arenites. Among the fossils it contains are sea urchins, belemnites and sea reptiles such as Mosasaurus. In southern Europe, the Cretaceous is a marine system consisting of competent limestone beds or incompetent marls.
Because the Alpine mountain chains did not yet exist in the Cretaceous, these deposits formed on the southern edge of the European continental shelf, at the margin of the Tethys Ocean. Stagnation of deep sea currents in middle Cretaceous times caused anoxic conditions in the sea water leaving the deposited organic matter undecomposed. Half the worlds petroleum reserves were laid down at this time in the anoxic conditions of what would become the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mexico. In many places around the world, dark anoxic shales were formed during this interval; these shales are an important source rock for oil and gas, for example in the subsurface of the North Sea. During th
Frank Erwin Center
The Frank C. Erwin Jr. Center is a multi-purpose arena located on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas, it is sometimes referred to as "The Drum" or "The Superdrum", owing to its round, drum-like appearance from outside. The multi-purpose facility hosts entertainment events and is the home court for the UT men's and women's basketball programs; the Erwin Center is located at the southeastern corner of the UT central campus and is bounded on the east by Interstate 35. Built to replace Gregory Gymnasium as the men's and women's basketball teams' home arena, the Special Events Center was completed in 1977 for a total cost of $34 million; the Texas men's basketball team opened the events center on November 29, 1977 with an 83–76 victory over the Oklahoma Sooners. UT undertook extensive renovations of the facility from 2001 to 2003 at a cost of $55 million, among other things and renovated seating, new video and sound systems, new lighting, 28 suites; the building is named for former UT Board of Regents member Frank Erwin, who as a regent was controversial due to his hostility towards the burgeoning on-campus, political counterculture movement of the late 1960s and was directly involved in the arrest of protesting students and the purging of what he deemed as "unpatriotic" faculty.
Known as the Special Events Center, the facility was renamed in 1980 to honor Erwin, who died that same year. A two-level layout accommodates up to 16,540 spectators for basketball games and up to 17,900 spectators for concerts; the inner ring of the arena averages around 20 rows deep, while the mezzanine is deeper at around 24 rows. The size of the arena's inner ring is dependent on the event being hosted; the Dell Medical Center, a $334 million teaching hospital for the University, has identified the parking lot and Waller Creek area directly across from the Frank Erwin Center as Phase I of construction, with phases calling for the demolition and relocation of the Frank Erwin Center, preferably on the University of Texas at Austin campus. A discussed location is the parking lots south of Mike A. Myers Soccer Stadium. In 2018, it was announced that Oak View Group and the University of Texas had agreed to build a new $338 million dollar arena for the Texas Longhorns basketball program to replace the Frank Erwin Center.
Located adjacent to downtown Austin, The Erwin Center is accepted to be Austin's current premier venue for large public and private events. The center holds many events such as concerts, professional wrestling events, bull riding and private banquets; the arena has hosted three UFC mixed martial events: UFC Fight Night: Marquardt vs. Palhares in 2010, UFC Fight Night: Edgar vs. Swanson in 2014, UFC Fight Night: Cowboy vs. Medeiros in 2018. Music artists such as KISS, U2, Bon Jovi, Pearl Jam, Paul McCartney, Def Leppard, Garth Brooks, Van Halen, Prince, Rod Stewart, Radiohead, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and many others have performed at the arena; the Erwin Center hosted the semifinals and finals of the University Interscholastic League boys' and girls' basketball playoffs in all five classifications until 2015, when the playoffs moved to San Antonio. List of NCAA Division I basketball arenas Frank Erwin Center Frank C. Erwin Jr. Special Events Center – Texassports.com
History of Austin, Texas
The recorded history of Austin, began in the 1830s when Anglo-American settlers arrived in Central Texas. In 1837 settlers founded the village of Waterloo on the banks of the Colorado River, the first permanent settlement in the area. By 1839, Waterloo would become the capital of the Republic of Texas. Austin's history has been tied to state politics and in the late 19th century, the establishment of the University of Texas made Austin a regional center for higher education, as well as a hub for state government. In the 20th century, Austin's music scene had earned the city the nickname "Live Music Capital of the World." With a population of over 800,000 inhabitants in 2010, Austin is experiencing a population boom. During the 2000s Austin was the third fastest-growing large city in the nation. Evidence of habitation of the Balcones Escarpment region of Texas can be traced to at least 11,000 years ago. Two of the oldest Paleolithic archeological sites in Texas, the Levi Rock Shelter and Smith Rock Shelter, are located southwest and southeast of present-day Austin respectively.
Several hundred years before the arrival of European settlers, the area was inhabited by a variety of nomadic Native American tribes. These indigenous peoples fished and hunted along the creeks, including present-day Barton Springs, which proved to be a reliable campsite. At the time of the first permanent settlement of the area, the Tonkawa tribe was the most common, with the Comanches and Lipan Apaches frequenting the area; the first European settlers in the present-day Austin were a group of Spanish friars who arrived from East Texas in July 1730. They established three temporary missions, La Purísima Concepción, San Francisco de los Neches and San José de los Nazonis, on a site by the Colorado River, near Barton Springs; the friars found conditions undesirable and relocated to the San Antonio River within a year of their arrival. Following Mexico's Independence from Spain, Anglo-American settlers began to populate Texas and reached present-day Central Texas by the 1830s; the first documented permanent settlement in the area dates to 1837 when the village of Waterloo was founded near the confluence of the Colorado River and Shoal Creek.
By 1836 the Texas Revolution was over and the Republic of Texas was independent. That year was characterized by political disarray in Texas. In 1836, no fewer than five Texas sites served as temporary capitals of the new republic, before President Sam Houston moved the capital to Houston in 1837. Shortly after the election of President Mirabeau B. Lamar, the Texas Congress appointed a site-selection commission to locate an optimal site for a new permanent capital, they chose a site on the western frontier, after viewing it at the instruction of President Lamar, who visited the sparsely settled area in 1838. Lamar was a proponent of westward expansion. Impressed by its beauty, abundant natural resources, promise as an economic hub, central location in Texas territory, the commission purchased 7,735 acres along the Colorado River comprising the hamlet of Waterloo and adjacent lands; because the area's remoteness from population centers and its vulnerability to attacks by Mexican troops and Native Americans displeased many Texans, Sam Houston among them, political opposition made Austin's early years precarious ones.
However, Lamar prevailed in his nomination, which he felt would be a prime location that intersected the roads to San Antonio and Santa Fe. Chartered in 1839, the Texas Congress designated the name of Austin for the new city. According to local folklore, Stephen F. Austin, the "father of Texas" for whom the new capital city was named, negotiated a boundary treaty with the local Native Americans at the site of the present-day Treaty Oak after a few settlers were killed in raids. After the republic purchased several hundred acres to establish the city, Lamar renamed it in honor of Stephen F. Austin in March 1839; the city's original name is honored by local businesses such as Waterloo Ice House and Waterloo Records, as well as Waterloo Park downtown. Lamar tapped Judge Edwin Waller to direct the construction of the new town. Waller chose a 640-acre site on a bluff above the Colorado River, nestled between Shoal Creek to the west and Waller Creek to the east. Waller surveyed a grid plan on a single square-mile plot with 14 blocks running in both directions.
One grand avenue, which Lamar named "Congress", cut through the center of town from Capitol Square down to the Colorado River. The streets running north-south were named for Texas rivers with their order of placement matching the order of rivers on the Texas state map; the east-west streets were named after trees native to the region, despite the fact that Waller had recommended using numbers. The city's perimeters stretched north to south from the river at 1st Street to 15th Street, from East Avenue to West Avenue. Much of this original design is still intact in downtown Austin today. In October 1839, the entire government of the Republic of Texas arrived by oxcart from Houston. By the next January, the population of the town was 839. During the Republic of Texas era, France sent Alphonse Dubois de Saligny to Austin as its chargé d'affaires. Dubois purchased 22 acres of land in 1840 on a high hill just east of downtown to build a legation, or diplomatic outpost; the French Legation stands as the oldest documented frame structure in Austin.
In 1839, the Texas Congress set aside 40 acres of land north of the capitol and downtown for a "university of the first class." This land became the central cam
